What we're looking at
Mayor Phil Gordon said the Phoenix government is smaller per capita today than four decades ago.

The comment
"Our city government, per capita, is smaller today than at any time since the 1970s."

The forum
2011 Phoenix State of the City Address on March 29.

Analysis
Every year during Phoenix's budgeting process, the city tracks its number of employees and its population. In the past four decades, the lowest ratio of employees to population was in the 1970-71 fiscal year, when Phoenix had 5,670 full-time positions serving 584,303 residents. That calculates to 9.7 employees per 1,000 residents.

In late February 2011, the Phoenix City Council eliminated 85 more vacant positions, putting the city's count of full-time positions at 15,000. City officials estimated Phoenix's population to be 1,602,702 for the current 2010-11 fiscal year. That means the employee to resident ratio was at 9.4. But, newly released U.S. census data shows the city's population is actually closer to 1,445,632, putting the resident to employee ratio at 10.4 residents.

Bottom line: Gordon's statement is true based on old population estimates, which would put the Phoenix government per capita at the lowest ratio it's been in 40 years. But based on updated census figures, the employee to resident ratio was actually smaller in 1970.

Gordon, however, has said the new census figures for Phoenix's population should actually be higher because he believes there was an undercount of Hispanic residents worried about the state's anti-illegal-immigrant laws.

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